(4.) THE CALAMITY THREATENED TO JERUSALEM (Chap. Ezekiel 11:1-13)
EXEGETICAL NOTES.—The movements of the Glory of the Lord are intermitted for a time. During that interval a new condition is entered into by Ezekiel. Hitherto, notwithstanding the unfolding of so many abominations before his eyes, and by which his heart must have been greatly distressed, his lips have been sealed in regard to any denunciation of them. Now, when the cherubic throne is hovering over the east gate, he is led to that spot and is empowered to utter a severe rebuke against the representatives of Jerusalem, and also to declare promises to the elders who represented the exiled.
Ezekiel 11:1. Ezekiel is placed by the spirit-power at the gate of the temple-court, under the Glory, “and, behold, in the opening of the gate twenty-five men.” This number makes us think of the twenty-five men mentioned in chap. Ezekiel 8:16; but we cannot suppose them, as some do, to be the same. They were worshipping the sun, and we should conclude that they were slain by the watchers with the weapon of destruction. Besides, the standing-place of the twenty-five of chap. 8 indicated that they were priests. That is not indicated here, and we are rather led to believe, from the position of the present twenty-five, and from their characterisation (Ezekiel 11:3), that they represent present civil authorities who were consulting with one another on matters of state; “and I saw in their midst Jaazaniah the son of Azur,” therefore not the elders of Israel he had previously seen (chap. Ezekiel 8:11), “and Pelatiah the son of Benaiah, princes of the people.” It is most likely that the two princes named were living in Jerusalem at that time, and noted as being leaders among the dominant party. Or they may have been singled out in order to point to the inconsistency between their names and the course they advocated. The Lord who hears (Jaazaniah) and who helps (Azur): the Lord who delivers (Pelatiah) and builds up (Benaiah); and they were departing from the Lord!
Ezekiel 11:2-3. “These are the men that devise mischief and give evil counsel in this city;” they set up an opposition to God’s messages, and provoke His wrath. The gist of their opposition is stated; but the Hebrew construction does not favour the translation of the A. V. The curtness of the phraseology renders the meaning obscure. “Who say, Not in nearness [is] the building of houses, it [is] the caldron and we [are] the flesh.” Any interpretation must take account of this as the evil counsel, and that it was held to be audaciously iniquitous. It obviously refers to some circumstances of that period, and we may find them indicated in that prophecy of Jeremiah in which he instructed the captive Jews to build houses, &c. (chap. Ezekiel 29:5). These princes scoffed at that message thus, “Those who are far off, in a land of exile, may take, if they please, the prophet’s advice and build houses for themselves there. That does not concern us here—it is too remote a district from ours. Let Jerusalem be a pot, which Jeremiah (chap. Ezekiel 1:13) declares is to smoke and boil by the fury of a hostile invasion from the north, then we shall be the flesh within it; its strong fortifications and sure defences shall preserve us against any flame of war that may kindle around us. We have no occasion to be terrified or succumb to warnings.” So they rejected the ways of the Lord and trusted to their own devices; and would such a defiant spirit, on the part of those who were called to honour Him, be met by the Lord?
Ezekiel 11:5. The impelling might of the Spirit moves Ezekiel to an utterance, “Thus saith the Lord, So ye say, O house of Israel, and what riseth up in your spirit, I know it.” Not only is He cognisant of their overt words and several plottings, but also of the real aims and wishes which underlie their proceedings, and holds them responsible (Ezekiel 11:6) for the consequences resulting therefrom.
Ezekiel 11:7. “Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Your slain, whom ye have placed in the midst of it, they are the flesh and it is the caldron.” Your slain are those who had been cut down through the outrages of the princes themselves (see chap. 24.), and also those who perished because of the wicked counsels whose effect had been to bring the Chaldean army against Jerusalem. “Ezekiel gives them back their own words, as containing an undoubted truth, but in a different sense from that in which they had used them.” There will be flesh protected in the caldron from the fire, but it will represent those who are slain. A grim satire: The dead are the safe! “And one shall bring you forth from its midst;” the princes and their abettors should not be defended in the city. They should be taken out of it to answer for their crimes.
Ezekiel 11:9. “A sword ye have feared, and a sword will I make to come upon you, saith the Lord Jehovah.” They were in apprehension of the war which had been pressed on by the king of Babylon, and, contrary to the urgent representations of Jeremiah, made a coalition-with Egypt; yet, notwithstanding their schemings, “the hand of strangers,” the Chaldean forces, would perpetrate violent deeds under the impact of divine impulses.
Ezekiel 11:11-12. The supposed security would be invaded: the city would not be a caldron for them; taken away from it, “on the frontier of Israel will I judge you;” they would be captives, and taken to the extremity of their land to undergo punishment. Jeremiah narrates (chap. Ezekiel 39:4-5) how this threat was fulfilled in the bloody scenes at Ribla in Hamath on the northern border of Israel, and where, as an Assyrian tablet in the British Museum tells, the headquarters of Nebuchadnezzar were on this expedition. Like all other tribulations, this had for its ulterior end to work the conviction that the Lord was their only real king, “in whose statutes ye walked not, and whose judgments ye did not; but ye did according to the judgments of the nations round about you:” a difference from what was stated in chap. Ezekiel 5:7, as to surrounding nations; but evidently referring here to such corrupt practices of their neighbours as they copied. The materials, out of which proceeded the destruction of the then existing Jewish government, are thus set forth, and, that destruction being so distinctly predicted, the people should learn that it was with the most perfect reason that God claimed for Himself the honour of supreme ruler. “It is lamentable if we must gain the knowledge of God by our own destruction,—if He, in whom we live and move and are, is first recognised by the strokes which break our own head” (Heng.)
Ezekiel 11:13. A portentous event impresses the prophetic words. “And it came to pass that as I was prophesying Pelatiah, the son of Benaiah, died.” Though this incident is still part of Ezekiel’s ecstasy, it is probable that one of the chief advisers of Jerusalem died about the time in some such awfully sudden manner and when surrounded by his fellows in the temple. The effect on the sensitive Seer is great, and suggests bitter and painful thoughts as to the slaughter of his people as happened previously (chap. Ezekiel 9:8): “and I fell on my face, and cried with a loud voice, and said, Ah Lord Jehovah, dost Thou make an utter end of the remnant of Israel?” He speaks as if he had forgotten all grounds of hope, and as if the people in the capital were the real representatives of Israel in whose mournful fate all Israel would be overwhelmed and lost. He will learn that it is otherwise.
HOMILETICS
REFUGES OF LIES BROKEN UP
Under the boastings of its leading men the people of Jerusalem were living in fancied security. They had heard from Jeremiah the prophet announcements of coming woes; but they put far from themselves the evil day, and buoyed themselves up with the expectation that, even if it did come, they would escape its troubles. Theirs is a common state of mind in respect to the truths of God which are wished not to be true, and we need to stand in His light that we may be disabused of our hurtful errors. He aims to help us thereto by a procedure such as is disclosed in this paragraph. He shows that self-constituted refuges—
I. Are based on miscalculations. Men calculate that there is no necessity immediately to renounce past courses: the judge is not standing before the door; the call to watch for the Master’s coming can be trifled with for a while. Thus many vaguely feel, if they do not positively present excuses as to the incidence of a season of searching and decisive trial. They may walk on in darkness till that day overtakes them as a thief. For, as all events are uncertain, to risk the present space given for repentance is, it may be, to risk the building of a house without means to finish it, the being overwhelmed by ruin from which there will be no opportunity to escape. We can use “now” but not “then” to flee.
II. They are abortive before God. He knows all that comes into the heart, the mouth, the hands, and so is able to test the real character of each. The stand made by men in self-defence is untenable. Fancies will not shut out afflictions, spring up when they may. No causes, no secret purposes can be so encrusted that they will elude the penetration of the eyes that are as a flame of fire. To cherish hopes, apart from Christ, that we shall be preserved from future evils, is to cherish hopes on a quicksand over which the tidal wave is beginning to rise Sins make culprits, and the righteous Lord will not let one elude His sentence, whatever the rank, the numbers, the religious privileges be. Search lest thy refuge lie open to the flood of divine condemnation.
III. They are open to dislocations. One is from the word of the Lord. It came by prophets. It has come, in these last days, by a Son. We read, we hear what He hath spoken, and learn that the entire bearing of that word of the living God is to convict of sin and to bring to immediate faith in the Saviour from sin. Again and again were men urged to “Hear the Word of the Lord;” again and again are we urged now, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.”
Another is from the action of human influences. The sword, captivity, spoiling of goods affected the contemporaries of Ezekiel: an ailment, an emigration, a pecuniary loss operate upon us. We shall miss the true reasons for such shakings of our usual affairs, if we do not trace in them the will of the righteous and loving Lord, who would show to us that we have been trusting in that which is of the flesh, who would draw us to plant our feet upon the Rock of ages. “I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and punish the men that are settled on their lees: that say in their hearts, The Lord will not do good, neither will He do evil” (Zephaniah 1:12).
Thus are records made that the Lord sets His face against our doings that are not good, and that, whether they are to be classed under unfaithfulness to Him or unbrotherliness to men, He will expose them to utter collapse. No schemes, no confidences will be capable of resisting Him. “The Lord is known by the judgment that He executeth.”
Who will accept the decisions of the Holy One as to their hopes of safety coming storms? Who will forsake all and follow Christ? “If you would not be broken by His judgment, do not break His statutes; if you would secure your lives, walk in His laws.”
A VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH (Ezekiel 11:13)
Painful associations were linked in with the sudden end of Pelatiah’s counsel and boastings. While the consensus of human testimony proves that such an immediate cessation of the activities of life is not considered as always stamped with the brand of punishment, it is always regarded as more or less of a calamity. Even they who know that the hand of the Good Shepherd is leading them into the unseen world, yet shrink from this manner of exit from the present world. The feeling is to be accounted for because of—
I. The general mysteriousness. There are no precise premonitions, no apparently gradual preparations. For though such a death must have been preceded by causes adequate to produce it, those causes, whether physical or mental, have not been credited with the deadly force which they exert. The death appears to be the bursting forth of a new and poignant energy, and our hearts are awed by the sad and startling memento which marks its route. Besides, the selection is utterly incomprehensible. Two men are given equal prominence in the course taken by Jerusalem, yet one expires in a moment, and the other still breathes the vital air. One of a family goes in an instant down to the grave, but all the other members go more or less slowly. We may be surprised at the falling of the lot, but we have no light as to its movements. Only this can we be sure of, that He who gave life takes it away in a method that is at once wise and good. “Blessed be the name of the Lord!”
II. The utter helplessness. No nursing, no skill can be made the least use of. We may cry for a parting word, a pressure, a look; but we cry with no result. We see the living now, in a moment we see they are not, and we can do nothing for them, we can only look. They pass altogether beyond our aid. They seem still beside us, but they have gone—where?
III. An indescribable contiguity of solemn spiritual conditions. Pelatiah is hearing the word of the Lord by Ezekiel, and in the very sound thereof hears the command of the King of terrors. Mercy and judgment stand hand in hand. The hearer becomes at once a dweller in “the silent land.” What will be learned there? The judgment of the All Holy, unaffected by any ignorance, misconception, shrinking! What if he be impenitent? What if his tongue be still vibrating with words in which he gave counsel against good? What if he has not cleansed his hands from the filth of dishonest gain or the blood of those he has injured? He is struck powerless. He is in face of iniquity at this step, he is confronted with its penalty at the next.
IV. A shock to natural feelings. Fear for oneself and pity for another cannot be restrained. Surprise and awe might have affected Pelatiah’s fellow-counsellors for a time. The effect was transient. They persisted in their wicked devices in the city; they acted in fatal correspondence thereto. Their seasonable impressions, like the morning cloud and early dew, soon vanished away. On the other hand men, with the love to God and man which stirred Ezekiel, pray that such a sudden stroke may not cut down those who are still in their trespasses; they ask for sparing mercy that such persons may be moved to work the works of God before the night cometh in which no man can work. How vain is prayer when the sinners prayed for will go on in evil ways! “How sad it is that the godly should be concerned for the coming doom of transgressors, and yet the transgressors themselves remain unmoved. Let believers imitate Ezekiel, and when judgments descend on some, ‘lift up their prayer for the remnant that is left’ ” (Fausset).
Wert thou this moment to go through the gates of death, wouldst thou go as one who had walked or had not walked thereto in the footprints of Jesus? “Watch, for ye know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man cometh.”